Single Time Period Production Scheduling Of Open Pit Mines

Production scheduling of an open-pit mine is one of the most important steps in open-pit mining. The mine's production schedule defines the distribution of cash flows and, as a result, directly influences the net present value (NPV) and overall economic feasibility of a project. The need to plan and operate a mine with an optimum production schedule has been obvious for some time, but the methods used to obtain such a schedule have not been so obvious. The current practice is to do a trial and error analysis by hand. In an attempt to improve the way production scheduling is currently done, a new computer based production scheduling algorithm was developed. This paper describes the fundamentals of this newly developed heuristic scheduling algorithm and its application to a gold deposit. The results of this case study show that the schedules, based on the new method, provide improved cash flows compared to production schedules done manually.